Ok. I posted a game idea here (called, quite originally, drone ships) a while back. It had some pretty major design flaws, and was kind of like magic the gathering meets amazing labyrinth. In space. Anyway, I worked on the idea for a while, because it had potential, and here is what I have now: The goal: Every good game needs a goal. Or at least I hope so. Victory is defined by destroying the enemies ability to produce any more units, or killing their mothership. With more than 2 people in a game, that means killing every enemy's mothership. How you do so: Drone ships is played on a hex board, with each side being 6 hexes long. Each mothership starts at one corner of the board. Each turn, you draw a card from your deck (this is a collectable card game). You then produce power (which you can increase by building more power plants in your mothership [power plants are a card]). You can then build new ships in your mothership, or upgrade old ships on the same hex (just a note here, ordinarily two ships can't be on the same hex, but you may be on the same hex as your own mothership). This seems like a good place to explain how ships work. The ship: Each ship is represented on the board with a little token. The actual ship is kept off to the side. You start a ship by playing down a hull card. The hull has a few characteristics. It lists the hull HP (when it reaches 0, the entire ship is destroyed), the number of Nodes (talked about later) and any special abilities. This includes the ability move 1 hex per turn, unless otherwise stated. Now, you may ask: but doom! You still haven't told us what nodes are! Or what other cards do, for that matter! (No one was asking this :( ) Good question, citizen! Nodes allow you to play cards off of them! So if a ship has 2 nodes, you can play two Node cards off of it! Node cards will mostly be weapons, but there are some cards which are shields, engines, or other oddities. To play down Node cards, you have to pay the power cost listed on the card, and attach the card to a spot on your hull. Node cards will also have a hit point count, because enemies can target nodes instead of ships (and in some cases have to). Reducing a node to 0 hp destroys it, also dealing 1 damage to the card it is attached to (in most cases, the hull card). Position of Node cards doesn't really matter, except if you have a splitter node. Splitter nodes are cards that take up a Node, but give two Nodes off of them, allowing more space. If a Splitter Node is destroyed, EVERY Node card attached to it dies. So! You create a new ship in your mothership (or give an old ship some new guns). Now what? Now, you get to move every ship (including your mothership, which can move 1 hex a turn), as much as they can (or less). You may also activate any abilities on ships (including weapons), by paying any powers costs they have, at any time during movement. So a ship could fire, and then move, or move, fire, then more more, of even shoot different weapons at different times! Then, sadly, your turn is coming near it's end... then it is your enemy's turn! However! There are 'event' cards, which you may play at ANY time during ANY turn (like magic the gathering instants). Same stack rules, as well. These will also have a power cost. Some notes: Your mothership doesn't repair ships when it retrofits them. Some Node cards allow you to repair, however. Most weapons have a range requirement (which is exact) to attack. Some cards have a range. Some list penalties for firing at a different range, but pay attention to that. Some terrain tiles are special, and will have any rules listed on them (or in the rules book, as needed). Ships can fire, but not move the turn of creation. A ship cannot attack a mothership if there is a ship on the same square (eg. a ship just produced) The mothership cards (like power plants) are untargetable with weapons. They are inside the mothership. Any such card is called a Mother card, instead of a Node card. You lose all unspent power at the very start of your turn, and move at the end of your turn. Nearly all weapons, and other abilities, have a power cost to activate. Just putting it out there. Anything you think needs clarification? Any rules questions? Any design questions? Anything? [Edited by - doomhascome on June 18, 2009 4:25:08 PM]

An image of the alpha map can be found at:
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/1733/droneshipsmap.jpg
The things that look like 6s are repair stations, which heal a total of 3 damage to any nodes (or the hull) of a ship starting a turn on them.
The asteroids make movement harder, but prevent some damage that would be dealt to the ships on them.
The lightning thingy in the middle increases power generated by any ship on it (usually the mothership)

Seriously people. I need some feedback.

Hm. Been a while now, and still no responses. Is the length of the post the problem? A lot of people read it... at least hypothetically.

Anyways, I started working on the card list.
Some interesting mechanics I'm including:

Rockets: they move 3-4 hexes every turn, after the turn they're launched, towards an enemy. You can change which enemy they move to at the start of your turn. They can, however, be shot down (they have health).

Lasers: standard, instantaneous damage. Can hit any enemy up to a max range.

Kinetic projectiles: hits enemies at a set range, with penalties for any other. Cost less to use than lasers, though.

Shields: block X damage per turn to the ship they're on, and can use power to block Y more.

Fighter bays: once per turn, they can use power to make a fighter token show up on a surrounding, unoccupied hex. Fighter stats differ based on bay quality.

changes:
default ship movement is now 2 hexes per turn (changed from 1). Mothership is still 1.
Mothership auto-regenerates 3 hit points per turn.

Ok. I've been toying around with a movement idea for a while now, and it's worked in basically every context, but I'm not sure it applies to this one.

Movement is done in inches. Which is to say, there are no squares on the board (or, in this case, hexes). The board can be in any shape, but when a ship has a movement of 2, it can move up to 2 inches per turn (or any unit of measurement).

This is primarily cool because the inches don't have to be straight. You can curve your move, or make sharp turns.


Now: games I've made where this worked:

In the Land of Cathdor: a simple (relatively) turn based tabletop rpg, where you played a mage allied with an element. Your movement was mostly determined by luck, with terrain modifications. It became cool for the water mage, because he got bonus move on water, so he was following streams, running from the fire mage, who has crap for move crossing water.

Shards of a Galactic Soul: a turn based tabletop empire managing space game. Somewhat like a board game version of sins of a solar empire. Movement was between planets. It was actually quite cool.


But! This game might not be suited. Terrain seems to be less important for movement, so bending your move matters a lot less. It might matter in a very few circumstances, but is it worth it? Meh. Maybe. Most likely not, though. Any thoughts?

I really like the ideas, but unfortunately, I'm not very good in imagining how a table game is played only reading the rules ( or a part of them, in this particular case, since you are still working on the game ). To see if they work, your way is probably a lot of playtesting =)

However, there are a few things I didn't grasp reading your posts:

1)

Quote:

Reducing a node to 0 hp destroys it, also dealing 1 damage to the card it is attached to (in most cases, the hull card).

So if you have the final ultimate weapon on your full metal jacket ship, but the enemy throws a pencil at you dealing 1 damage, the final ultimate weapon is automatically lost?

2) Even though you have modified the movement from hexes to inches, isn't still the map a little small? A normal ship can arrive in the center in jsut 2 turns, starting from a border, and I imagine that from the center the control over the map is absolute.

3) Is power infinitely stackable?

4) How much stronger is a ship with cards on it than a normal one? Because, if I've understood well, to have a ship with an upgrade, you'd have to wait 2 turns, 1 for creating the ship itself and the second to upgrade it. In the same time the enemy would create 2 ships, and move one of them of 2 inches, so he'd have a strategical and numeric advantage. Are cards sufficiently strong to balance that?


Other questions would be on the gameplay, but even if you'd describe a full complete game, I think I wouldn't be able to get if the game works well ( for me, ofc ) and if there are possibly flaws in the gameplay. So, I'll wait for a playable version ^_^

Quote:

Quote: Reducing a node to 0 hp destroys it, also dealing 1 damage to the card it is attached to (in most cases, the hull card). So if you have the final ultimate weapon on your full metal jacket ship, but the enemy throws a pencil at you dealing 1 damage, the final ultimate weapon is automatically lost?

No. If you have the final ultimate weapon, it has to take (likely) a lot of damage to die. When it does die, however, it deals 1 damage to the hull.

If the hull dies, the ultimate weapon goes kabloie

Quote:

Even though you have modified the movement from hexes to inches, isn't still the map a little small? A normal ship can arrive in the center in jsut 2 turns, starting from a border, and I imagine that from the center the control over the map is absolute.

Meh. Combat should start reasonably soon. Keep in mind it still takes 5 turns for the motherships to potentially collide. Size may be adjusted in playtesting.

Quote:

3) Is power infinitely stackable?

Yes. But it starts because power plants are cards, there comes a point where it really isn't useful

Quote:

4) How much stronger is a ship with cards on it than a normal one? Because, if I've understood well, to have a ship with an upgrade, you'd have to wait 2 turns, 1 for creating the ship itself and the second to upgrade it. In the same time the enemy would create 2 ships, and move one of them of 2 inches, so he'd have a strategical and numeric advantage. Are cards sufficiently strong to balance that?

Note entirely sure I understand this. Upgrading is retrofiting, adding new cards to an old ship. Like, if you made a ship, and draw a kickass gun, you can add the gun to the ship after it's built.

Also: ships are cards. And guns are cards. So the enemy would've made two weaker ships, while you would (hopefully) have a better ship then them.